Rhetoric And Reality: The World Bank's New Concern for the Poor
UnpublishedMay/June
1996
Volume:
29
Number:
6
Article
the NACLA editors
Rigoberta Menchu Turn, a Quich6 Maya, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 in recognition of her work on behalf of indigenous peoples and poor ladinos in Guatemala. With the prize money, she established a foundation in her name to continue the same work.
Karin Stahl
Social-investment funds have been implemented regionwide to combat the rising poverty associated with structural adjustment. These funds do little, however, to address the structural causes of poverty.
Adriana Puiggros
Educators International and the Confederation of American Educators-the two organizations to which the majority of teachers in the Western world belong-met on October 14-16, 1995 in Buenos Aires. The meeting, which was hosted by the Confederation of Educational Workers of the Argentine Republic (CTERA), was held to coincide with the Ibero-American Summit in Bariloche.
Laurie Richardson
The disarmament process stopped before it actually started. Haiti's paramilitary and ex-military forces remain heavily armed, and ongoing impunity allows them to continue to repress and extort an unarmed population.
Pilar Vergara
Because Chile's social policy remains subordinate to the logic of the marketplace, the government The 1990 inauguration of cdaIIfI.L President Patricio Aylwin, the wi head of the Concertaci6n of Parties for Democracy, a chasm coalition of center and left-wing political parties, marked the end rich ar of 17 years of harsh military rule and the beginning of Chile's transition to democracy.
Rhoda & Mark Berenson
Lori Berenson As the parents of Lori Berenson, we would like to comment on the Taking Note editorial, "Lori Berenson in Context" [March/April 1996]. Lori was arrested on November 30, 1995 while on a bus in Lima after observing the Peruvian Congress in her capacity as a free- lance journalist.
Jo-Marie Burt
In the wake of the structural-adjustment program implemented by President Alberto Fujimori in August, 1990, the number of Peruvians living below the poverty line jumped from six million to eleven million virtually overnight. The adjustment measures were implemented "without anesthesiaw-without, that is, any government social programs or emer- gency measures.
John Gershman
In early October last year, over a thousand marchers left Dupont Circle and proceeded up Connecticut Avenue to the Washington Sheraton, site of the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which are held in Washington, D.C.
Fátima Vianna Mello
The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) extol the importance of involving civil society in the projects that they fund. From the Amazon rainforest to southern megacities like So Paulo, local communities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Brazil understand how things really work: despite the rhetoric, the Brazilian government and the multi- lateral lending institutions lack the political will to create institutional mechanisms to facilitate a democratic dialogue with the populations affected by the projects.
Carlos M. Vilas
The debt crisis of the early 1980s and the macroeconomic adjustment and neoliberal reforms that the region's governments implemented to deal with it resulted in a dramatic increase in the num- ber of people living in poverty. In 1980, 118 million Latin Americans-about a third of the region's total population- were poor.
The Murals of Revolutionary Nicaragua, 1979-1992 by David Kunzle with an introduction by Miguel D'Escoto, University of California Press, 1995, 203 pp., $65 (cloth), $29.
After years of spreading the gospel that the revival of economic growth would be a cure-all for the region's ills, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have begun to change their tune. These multilater- al development banks, which used to plow most of their money into the con- struction of bridges and dams, nowadays espouse the need to improve the welfare of ordinary citizens.
Adriana Puiggros
The theme of the Fifth Ibero-American Summit, held in the Argentine resort of Bariloche last October, was "Education and Development." The 22 heads of state who were present at the gathering painted an imaginary portrait of progress and good ped- agogical intentions towards the region's excluded majorities.